iDialit, your anti-answering-machine solution

Two most annoying phone experiences in my life are related to receiving cold calls, for which luckily there are now do-not-call lists, and having to call a large company to talk to a human being and receive support for my problem. For the latter situation, I would follow the same process that almost everyone else does and call the official number, where an automated answering machine would have me press 1, 2, …, gazillion, going through options such as “If you have 2 eyes press 2, if you have 3 press 3” and so on until a considerably number of minutes later someone would pick up.

Fear no more, I have found my solution for the second problem. Called iDialit, this brilliant little app solves my (and others for sure) particular problem. As the name suggests, the app will help you dial the number of a company in its database and get directed to an operator, without having to interact with that dreadful machine that keeps telling you to press 1 to continue.

Available for Android but also iPhone, iDialit saves you tremendous amount of time by dialing the number for you, pressing through all the combinations they would require you to do, and give you back an operator, a live human being ready to listen to your problem. It doesn’t have a long list of scary features, just the ones that matter:

Search for the company you want to call, without having to browse manually through each category to find it – though you can if you want to go through all the categories: Car insurance, Banks, Credit Cards, Health Insurance, Retail Stores, Utility Companies, Wireless, Store Credit and others.

Favorite companies that you want to have quick access to (my favorite ones are the utility companies).

View the direct number for a company and also report a non-working number.

Suggest a company that you didn’t find in the database (you’ll be notified when it’s added).

As happy as I feel for its developer, I have to pity him a bit, he had to go through all the phone numbers manually at one point and verify each one if it’s properly working.

You can spare yourself by downloading the app either from its official mobile-friendly (responsive) website at http://idialit.com/ or from Google Play: iDialit.

We’ve reached to iDialit’s main developer for an interview to get more insight into the app, so here’s the full interview:

Q: Can you share some information about yourself with our readers?

A: iDialit is the result of a joint venture between my friend (Vick) and me (Arsen). We are both very active Android fans.

Q: How did you come with the idea to create iDialit, what inspired you?

A: Well, here is the full story:
Me and my friend were at an Armenian BBQ and needed to call our bank real quick to check on something. When I called my bank and tried to get a human on the line for a quick question, we realized how damn long it takes to get someone on the phone. My God, I must have pressed “zero” and “pound” like a million times to no avail. So, as a joke, we started talking about an app that would do all this dull-crap-zero-pound-number-guessing for us AND right there, iDialit was born. We started talking more and more about it and decided that everyone could use such an app.

Q: How long did it take from that idea until the first public release?

A: Well, creating the app didn’t take long, but getting most of the major companies’ phone numbers and ONE-BY-ONE dialing each number and figuring out their sequence requirements to get to a human took about 6 months. Even as I type this we are constantly calling new companies and adding them to our database. We want to have the most comprehensive database ever.

Q: Have you developed other apps or is this your first one? Do they target only the Android market or others as well (i.e. iOS)?

A: This is our first app and we wanted to launch this brilliant app for iOS as well but due to their limitations we were not able to do so, at least currently. We are working very hard to develop iDialit for the iPhone as well.

Q: With hundred of thousand of apps in the appstore, how do you make people aware of your apps?

A: This is truly the trickiest part of developing an amazing app and getting people to notice it. We do everything from online marketing to car decals and advertising in major shopping malls. It’s one thing developing an awesome app and another story getting people to discover your app.

Q: What future plans you have for your app (new features, sequels)?

A: We are constantly adding new numbers to our database and soon we will be adding local numbers for location based services. Example: local plumbing services, tire shops and so on.

Also we will be expanding to other countries.

Q: Have any tips/advices for other developers that want to start working on an app? Any tools that you consider to be a must?

A: Our best advice for others would be to think of something unique, new and not to try copy someone else’s work, even when it’s so tempting :).